Poitín Now Cocktail Session – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

Some events at Belfast Whiskey Week feel like a masterclass; others feel like a minor uprising. The Poitín Now: Spin-Off Cocktail Session at the 2024 festival was firmly in the latter camp — a boisterous, boundary-pushing evening dedicated to Ireland's most rebellious spirit, held at the always-characterful Angel & 2 Bibles on the 21st of July. At £35 a head, it was one of the festival's most talked-about left-field picks, and for good reason.

About This Event

We want to introduce the World to Poitín, and what better way than to have a cheeky wee Spin-Off Event at the Festival. We've included Poitín in the past and it’s gone down a treat – come try some unique cocktails, sip some Poitín and join the revolution!!!

Looking Back

Poitín — poteen to many, uisce beatha in its rawest, most unruly form — carries the weight of Irish history on its shoulders. Once distilled in secret in the hills and glens, passed between neighbours with a nod and a wink, it was the illicit heartbeat of rural Ireland for generations. The duchas of it runs deep. What made this session so compelling was how it took that storied tradition and asked a simple, exciting question: what happens when you give it a cocktail glass and a bit of swagger?

The evening was framed as a 'spin-off' — a deliberate sidestep from the main programme of single malts and blended expressions — and that framing gave it an energy all its own. Guests arrived curious and left converted. The cocktails on offer were genuinely inventive, leaning into poitín's high-wire character rather than trying to tame it. Sharp citrus, herbal bitters, even some unexpected sweetness — each drink was built to showcase what makes poitín so distinctive: that raw, agricultural punch that no amount of oak ageing has smoothed away. This is a spirit that tells you exactly where it came from.

The venue played its part beautifully. Angel & 2 Bibles brings a lived-in warmth to any occasion — it's the kind of Belfast bar that feels like it has seanchas soaked into the walls — and it gave the session a sense of intimacy that a larger venue couldn't have managed. Groups leaned across tables, compared notes, debated favourites, and generally carried on in the way that only a room full of people discovering something new together can. There was more than one sláinte raised before the evening was out.

For those who'd already dipped into the broader festival programme — perhaps through one of the Bushmills introductory sessions or the thoughtful Sexton Deconstruction showcase — the Poitín Now event offered a genuinely different perspective on Irish spirits. Where those sessions rewarded patience and contemplation, this one rewarded curiosity and a willingness to throw the rulebook out. Together, they illustrated what Belfast Whiskey Week does best: showing the full breadth of what Ireland's distilling tradition actually looks like.

If poitín has historically been the spirit at the edge of the map — the one marked 'here be dragons' on any respectable whiskey map — then sessions like this are doing the vital work of bringing it back to the centre. The revolution, as the event description promised, was very much underway. And from what we saw that Sunday evening in Belfast, it tasted brilliant.

More from Belfast Whiskey Week

• Session 83: Bushmills History (MasterClass)
• Session 1: Bushmills New Cask Finish Range (Introduction)
• Session 2: Bushmills Core Malts (Introduction)
• Session 22: Sexton Deconstruction (Showcase)
• Session 23: Bushmills Cask strength (Mini-MasterClass)
• Session 50: Bushmills Causeway Collection (MasterClass)

Explore the full programme on the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map.